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Business Travel: These are the things that should stay in Vegas

New company lets you keep toiletries in a box for your next visit to Sin City, which allows you to just bring carry-on luggage with you.

Want to pack light for your future trips to the Strip? The Vegas Box lets you do so with its convenient set-up that whisks your belongings to your hotel room. Items such as shampoos and perfumes that can't be carried onto a plane because of security reasons can be kept in the box. (Ethan Miller / GETTY IMAGES)

It’s called The Vegas Box. It’s a storage facility for frequent Las Vegas visitors who want to cut down on their luggage and, especially if they’re flying on American airlines, their luggage fees.

It’s a supremely simple affair: you pay $99 a year to store your stuff in what looks like a blue recycling bin that’s stored in a 1,000-square-foot storage facility just outside of town.

Your annual fee includes two pick-ups and deliveries to a hotel of your choice (they’ve got a list of the ones they deliver to, but it’s pretty comprehensive, and they’re open to adding to it), and a year’s worth of storage. If you stay more than twice, they’re currently charging $20 for each extra delivery. That’s a lot, as far as I’m concerned, but they say if you ask nicely, they can sell you an unlimited subscription for $199.

Las Vegas is one of the business traveller capitals of the world. Last year, it hosted more than 6 million of them. And almost the same number, business travelers and others, go to Vegas more than twice a year. This means that it’s statistically probable that there’s a core group of a few tens of thousands or so who go considerably more frequently than that.

If you’re one of them, ask yourself this: wouldn’t you like to not keep your toiletries in 100ml containers? Heck, you could even leave a suit there, or at least your special Vegas blazer that’s too shiny to wear anywhere else.

That’s what got Vegas Box founders Gena and Matt Marler, who live in Seattle, thinking about the idea in the first place (the toiletries, not the shiny clothing).

“I’m kind of a high-maintenance girl,” Gena says, “and I have all this stuff that I want to bring. My husband wants to carry on bags and not check the bags, and I’ve got a lot of liquids all the time.”

So they got to talking about alternatives, and though neither was a business person before, they lit on the idea of a start-up.

It launched on March 24, so it’s impossible to say whether it’ll succeed or not, but it does seem like it should, or at least could.

The storage facility has a live-in caretaker, and the property is behind a locked gate, but if something goes wrong, each box is insured for $100. “We don’t want anyone to put their Rolex in there,” Gena says, “or any cash.” But $100 is good enough for the sorts of things that might allow a frequent Vegas flyer to travel carry-on only.

It’s a good enough idea that I wondered whether hotels would let you do the same sort of thing. So I called around. The Hotel St. Paul, a boutique hotel in Old Montreal that’s popular with business travellers, says it will keep most whatever you like there if you ask, for free, depending on the size of it and the frequency with which you stay. The Royal York in Toronto will do it, too, and even has a safe-deposit box system for guests to leave smaller, more valuable items they wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving with the bell desk, all free of charge. The one caveat, at least for the boxes, is that the hotel needs proof of your next reservation before it’ll take it.

And it’s not just the high-end places that will accommodate you. Best Western, the world’s largest hotel chain and one that’s especially popular with the low- to mid-range business traveller, says that some of its properties will do it, too.

I didn’t find anyone who said no, actually, which may be a happy reflection on the state of customer service in the North American hospitality industry, or just an indication that they still haven’t recovered from the recession and are willing to do anything for you as long as you say you’ll stay with them again.

Whatever the case, it’s something to consider if you’re interested in lightening your load on a frequent route. You could probably work out the same sort of deal at Vegas hotels and not bother with the Vegas Box folks at all, but with all those hotels and their repertoire of weird themes it’d be a shame to stay at just one, wouldn’t it?

Do you have any tips for frequent travellers on how to lessen the load? If so, let me know.

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